The GFG Blog
2009Jun
There’s no place like it
Charles
Jun
04
No Comments
There’s an excellent series of photos on the Undertaken With Love Flickr site telling the story of a home funeral. Click slideshow at the top right for the best view. It’s thought provoking in any number of ways. See how engaged the children are. And you can see from everyone’s
The public’s right to be right
Charles
Jun
03
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Ask them and they’ll tell you. What do clients want? Choice. Funeral directors have got the message. They’re doing the lip-service. How do they stand on delivery? Not terribly well, most of them, and for sound business reasons. As soon as you start to unbundle funerals and let clients source
2009May
Smiling damned villains
Charles
May
22
No Comments
Did you read about that undertaker in Middlesbrough? The one who stole the keys from a rival undertaker’s hearse as it sat obedient and empty outside the Salvation Army citadel? It had to be hotwired to get it to the cemetery. It had to be seen to be believed. The
The fluffy myth of the good death
Charles
May
18
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Farrah Fawcett, Charlie’s Angel star in the 70s, she of the much copied hairstyle, wants to die on camera. She was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. The camera has been rolling since then. It has captured highs, like when the tumour is briefly found to have disappeared, and lows,
Exit strategy
Charles
May
13
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This is not unusual these days: you see someone entranced by a song and when it’s done they say fervently, “I want that played at my funeral.” You’ve done it, too? When you’ve done it once it becomes a habit. Sometimes a new song displaces an old one. Sometimes you
Check out the Undertaken With Love flickr site
Charles
May
12
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It was the Natural Death Centre (NDC) which first advocated a return to the ancient, not long lost practice of caring for our own dead, and it was John Bradfield who did the bulk of the research into what you can legally do and what you can’t*. This re-birth of
Desert flowers
Charles
May
11
3 comments
Why do people go to funerals? After all, the dead person won’t be there—not in spirit. I always think, when I survey a crowd at a funeral, that these people are being as unselfish as people can possibly be—and what a very rare thing that is. What’s the motivation? To
It’s only a rehearsal
Charles
May
11
No Comments
Here’s an interesting practice. In South Korea, where rapid industrialisation has generated societal angst and personal dysfunction—things capitalism taught us here in the UK ages ago—a Mr Ko Min-su has devised a training course in which participants rehearse their own death. The purpose is to teach them to re-evaluate their
No match for m’lud
Charles
May
11
No Comments
M’learned friends have spoken. Davender Ghai’s appeal to the high court to overturn Newcastle City Council’s ban on open-air cremation has been turned down like a bedspread. The 1902 Cremation Act was used in evidence against him. Funny, that. I thought the Act applied only to cremations in a crematorium.
